Many women who get their periods can identify with the creeping suspicion on a particularly heavy flow day that they've bled through their clothes. For some, like yogi Stephanie Góngora, who have very heavy periods, the issue is all too real. So Steph bravely took to Instagram to work through her own period anxiety and, along the way, normalize period blood. How? By filming herself going through a flow of yoga postures as she flows through her white yoga leggings.

She shared on Cosmopolitan.com exactly why she'd decided to create the Instagram post:

As a young gymnast who often had to practice in revealing clothes
regardless of whether or not I had my period, I often had nightmares
about ending my floor routine in a big puddle of blood. I have a very
heavy flow, and it's always been that way, so struggling with leaks
has been a constant problem for me...

She continues:

...Although the anxiety I'd get each month around the heaviest days of my
period was palpable and terrible, I never really thought to sit down
and dig into why I was feeling so ashamed about something that I
really couldn't control.

When some of her friends were approached to do a sponsored Instagram post for organic tampon company Cora Women, Steph writes that they shied away because of the taboo that still forces women to hide their periods: "Heaven forbid a women admits to urinating or farting, or even worse, bleeding from her vagina!"

She decided to break the silence with a powerful Instagram video that would definitely get some attention: "I knew a bright red blood spot on pristine white pants would make a statement in a society that rarely takes the time to actually read — that catching people's eye with something a little more shocking might be necessary to snap them out of their social media scrolling, iPhone holding, mindless meme-watching daze," she writes.

The next time Steph got her period and was practicing alone, she removed her tampon. Instead of heading toward the bathroom, she writes, she changed from her shorts into the white leggings and started filming.

When I began to feel excessive wetness and realized there was blood on
my pants, I was initially uncomfortable since I, like most people,
generally prefer to remain clean and dry. However, it was discomfort
without full blown icky-ness or disgust, and it was greatly
overshadowed by a quiet sense of contentment. I was confident in my
intent — to not feel ashamed of the blood seeping through my pants —
and that made me confident in my actions.

The resulting video—the caption for which begins, "I am woman, therefore, I bleed."—has been watched by almost 214,000 people at the time of publish and has generated a lot of responses. Because trolls are trolls, some of them have been insulting, but she's also received a ton of DMs and comments that thank her for posting the video.

Poignantly, there were also those who admitted "they were shocked and disgusted by my post — but only until they began to consider why they felt that way," she writes. "Their disgust then turned to anger towards the system and society that has evolved to make women feel dirty."

Mega props to Steph for being brave enough to break this crazy taboo—and to do so in such a public way.